Canada’s GDP Data Marked By Goods and Services Split

Economists always caution against reading too much into one month’s worth of data, but in one key respect Canada’s disappointing growth data for August looks like a microcosm of the country’s economy over the longer term.

There was a stark contrast between the performances of the two basic components of Canada’s economy, the “goods-producing” sector, which encompasses resource industries, construction and manufacturing, and the service sector, which includes everything else. It extends from the retail sector, the country’s biggest employer, to finance, arts and the hospitality industries to professional services.

Output in the goods-producing sector fell 1% in the month; the service sector, on the other hand, grew by 0.2%.